I do enjoy writing, yes. A great deal. And I feel somewhat at a loss, aimless and foolishly sentimental, and disconnected, when I’ve finished one work and haven’t yet become absorbed in another. All of us who write, work out of a conviction that we are participating in some sort of communal activity. Whether my role is writing, or reading and responding, might not be very important. I take seriously Flaubert’s statement that we must love one another in our art as the mystics love one another in God. By honoring one another’s creation we honor something that deeply connects us all, and goes beyond us.

Of course, writing is only one activity out of a vast number of activities that constitute our lives. It seems to be the one that some of us have concentrated on, as if we were fated for it. Since I have a great deal of faith in the processes and the wisdom of the unconscious, and have learned from experience to take lightly the judgments of the ego and its inevitable doubts, I never find myself constrained to answer such questions. Life is energy, and energy is creativity. And even when we as individuals pass on, the energy is retained in the work of art, locked in it and awaiting release if only someone will take the time and the care to unlock it.

“Let me suggest the following practical suggestion. Literature, real literature must not be gulped down like some potion which may be good for the heart or good for the brain — the brain, that stomach of the soul. Literature must be taken and broken to bits, pulled apart, squashed — then its lovely reek will be smelt in the hollow of the palm, it will be munched and rolled upon the tongue with relish; then, and only then, its rare flavor will be appreciated at its true worth and the broken and crushed parts will again come together in your mind and disclose the beauty of a unity to which you have contributed something of your own blood.”

“Slowly Hofmannsthal shaped a synthesis between lifeless illusion and formless vitality, between Gardener-king and Madman. Out of it emerged the poet, not as legislator, not as judge, not as sympathizer, but as reconciler.

In 1906 Hofmannsthal defined the poet’s role with a new clarity: ‘It is he who binds up in himself the elements of the times.’ In a society and a culture that he saw as essentially pluralistic and fragmented, Hofmannsthal set literature the task of establishing relationships. The poet must accept the multiplicity of reality, and through the magic medium of language, bring unity and cohesion to modern man. The poet ‘is the passionate admirer of things of eternity and the things of the present. London in the fog with ghostly processions of unemployed, the temple ruins of Luxor, the splashing of a lonely forest spring, the roaring of monstrous machines: the transitions are never hard for him…everything is simultaneously present in him.’ Where others saw conflict or contradiction, the poet would reveal hidden ties and develop them by bringing out their unity through rhythm and sound.”

On the certainties that underlied communism, the ethics of quantitative and qualitative.

“Everyone who went over to communism had to accept the Leninist principle that you couldn’t make omelettes without breaking eggs. That was the first thing. But a basic question arose here, and I asked myself: what certainty is there; where are the criteria for that certainty? I was defenseless in my debate with Nowogrodzki because he showered me with numbers, and it’s difficult to argue with numbers – if numbers are accepted as an argument. One could use as a counter-argument Ivan Karamazov’s position that all the harmony of the universe is not worth the single tear of a child that has been wronged. Obviously, a certain gradation could be introduced here as God did with Abraham and Sodom. Not one tear but ten, or ten children. But as soon as one enters Marxism, several unspoken assumptions are accepted. The omelette is the first assumption, and the second is that numbers are an argument, that one can have a certain faith in determination, not only qualitative but quantitative. Qualitative determination is typical not only of Marxism and communism but also of many religions. But the quantitative (Abraham and Sodom: ten yes, but eleven no) is the contribution of French scientism: quantity as an ethical argument, the majority, the minority, what constitutes the majority. It all follows from that. It follows that fractions cannot exist, that the minority must without further discussion submit to the decrees, worldview, and theories of the party majority.”

Video of the day and ludicrous advertising line of the day (LALOTD?) comes from Sylvan Learning Centers. Conscientious Parent, what inspires more horror in you than the thought of your little ones locking up on the SAT?

Only the thought of them asking you for help. Sylvan feels you. Because shit, you barely got a C in pre-calc yourself. And who knows how much has changed since then?

“Math wasn’t easy when you were in school, and it’s only gotten HARDER!”

Similarly:

“Particle physics wasn’t easy when you were in school, and it’s only gotten…more entropic!”

“There was a lot of history when you were a kid, and now there’s only….more of it!”

I want you to look at this, especially if you savor the random and/or the seemingly senseless in life and supermarket aisles. For there – in the main aisle of my local supermarket, drifting between the courtesy desk and pharmacy counter – is where I first noticed this particular DVD display stand several months ago. I find myself drawn back to it every now and then, because it kind of blows my mind.

Just check it out. Look at it.

Errol Morris’s ‘Fog of War’ next to ‘Paul Blart, Mall Cop’. Recent Angelina Jolie spy thriller ‘Salt’ next to Frank Capra’s 1937 classic “Lost Horizon.” What else can we pick out in this picture? ‘Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?’ ‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.’ ‘2012.’ ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.’ ‘Golden Boy’ (twice.)

Note that it’s a double-sided display. Self-consciousness kept me from snapping a whole set of photos in the middle of the store, but I assure you the other side is just as varied and no less coherent. A Seinfeld series DVD alongside ‘Why We Fight’ alongside ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail.’ And so on.

A stranger juxtaposition of films old and new, mainstream and niche, mundane and coruscating you could not find in one place. Well, of course you might, in the bargain bin at your local big box store or odd-lot shop. But the thing is, you’re not looking at a bargain bin here. No, this isn’t one of those pits full of straight-to-DVD crap or sixty-seven discounted copies of last summer’s blockbuster dud. The display itself is rather small and select. There are some really good, if offbeat movies here, cheek-by-jowl alongside some trashy fluff and they’re all priced somewhere between 10 and 15 bucks. It’s not a junk pile. It couldn’t afford to be. I’m proceeding on the assumption that every inch of floor and shelf space in a supermarket (like other modern stores) is carefully accounted for, rationalized. That there’s no room for a product, display arrangement, or anything else that doesn’t pull its weight. Everything’s there for a reason. Isn’t it?

I can think of two possible explanations for the assortment we see here:

1. It really is just random what ends up here. In which case, weird.

2. More intriguingly to me, this islet of genrelessness (agenre?) is actually the product of some canny market research on the part of…well, whoever puts together/puts out these displays (I have no idea – a studio? a third-party distributor?) There is a higher vision at work, a foresight we ordinary people can hardly understand. I have the vision of someone poring over surveys, focus group transcripts, purchasing data, perhaps some deep psychographic profiling of Hudson Valley Hannaford’s shoppers, honing in their eclectic film tastes – and these is the result, this is it. This is a fair approximation of those tastes, made concrete (or cardboard, more precisely.)

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate. Seen from this point of view, the mental reactions of the inmates of a concentration camp must seem more to us than the mere expression of certain physical and sociological conditions. Even though conditions such as lack of sleep, insufficient food and various mental stresses may suggest that the inmates were bound to react in certain ways, in the final analysis it becomes clear that that the sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision, and not the result of camp influences alone. Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him – mentally and spiritually. He many retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.” These words frequently came to mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom – which cannot be taken away – that makes life meaningful and purposeful.” – Viktor Frankl

Last night I picked up ‘Man’s Search For Meaning‘ for the first time in a few years. It’s a horrifying, edifying, inspiring little book. I don’t mean ‘inspiring’ in the common, cheerful sense, but rather in Frankl’s account of human resilience amidst the worst imaginable conditions and insistence on the need for meaning-making in life.